The letters from Greene to Björk reflect a warmth
and easy familiarity made up of friends in common and visits
from each other's relatives, interspersed with comments
on writing, travel, plays and politics. Much of the Björk
side of the correspondence can be inferred. Greene is glad
she “laughed at Raffles” and “liked Dr.
Fischer.” He in turn hopes “the Norwegian film
goes well” in 1980 and is glad she is “having
a happy time working with Ingmar Bergman” in 1989.
He importunes her almost every year to come again to the
Cannes Film Festival.
It is already difficult, as we converse daily with friends
across continents by email, to re-imagine recent decades
when the post was the communication of choice. As Greene
relied on the written word delivered across countries (usually
from Antibes to Stockholm), his complaints in his letters
about the slowness of the post was bitter. Perhaps, though,
it did make each letter and card more valued. A card from
Anita arrived in good time in 1981, just when a friend’s
note was needed. Greene was “pleased and touched” by
her timely card; his planned trip to Panama had just been
disrupted: “every year for five years I have been
going as a guest of Omar Torrijos—each year about
now he always sent me my ticket & it had arrived & I
had cabled the date of my arrival and suddenly—the
news of his death. I had grown to love the man and he had
a real affection for me.”
These letters, a vestige of a larger correspondence presumed
lost, are rich with glimpses into the lives of two extraordinary
artists. A gift from Anita Björk's daughter Lo Dagerman,
they will add another layer of depth and understanding
to the library’s substantial archive of Greene’s
work. We thank the Björk family for their generosity
in safeguarding these letters at Georgetown.
